Blog entry #10

This week's readings covered helping students become better more strategic learners, the ethics of teaching, and the ability to sustain teaching growth for a long time.

Helping students become more strategic learners involves several strategies, but the ones I want to focus on from the reading are the importance of goals and self reflection as well as the use of existing knowledge to learn new things. Students need to have gaols for learning in all classes. With no target they are likely to just drift along aimlessly on a sea of facts. Many students don't feel that they really want to take a class, so they simply tolerate it and try to get by. It is a teachers job to kindle the fire of their curiosity and make them try to get something out of the course. By breaking the course topics into small more manageable areas of discussion a student is more likely to find something interesting to them and will set a goal for learning that. When compared to a huge monolithic idea it is easy to see how small topics are embraceable. Many classes are required for a major and the students need to take them, but don't want to. For this sort of class I would try to find a few interesting areas that will keep students interested or at the very least make them see the importance of the class. Pre-med students need to take a class covering some class of animal. They usually take the class that is easiest, not the most beneficial. To get people interested in mammalogy for example I could have a few topics that cover physiology and always compare different mammalian orders back to humans. There could be a topic on how mammals interact as invasive species for ECS majors. To get people interested is the best way to help them learn, but I would settle for students at least seeing a need to learn the information. Desire is difficult to instill, but reason is usually effective for changing minds.
I would also like to mention the use of previous knowledge to build new ideas. This is a common theme in the sciences. Students need to take certain courses because they will need to know things before there is synthesis into new higher level topics. For the most part this is direct relation of one idea to another, but it is important to look at analogies. When you look at a topic from a different perspective it is common to see things that were missed in the straight forward approach. For my evolution course I would likely have topics from economics to illustrate points. Survival of the fittest can be a difficult thing to look at in terms of living organisms, but to look at it in terms of financial institutions it may resonate.

Ethics in school is always seen as a touchy subject. When it is brought up there is always a mention of plagiarism and cheating, but what of the ethics the teacher must show. There is a need for teachers to set their ethical standards and stick to them. In this way they can maintain their responsibility to the students. The course that I am designing is a touchy subject. Each student has their own ingrained notion of what is right and wrong. The problem comes in managing how all of these views can be dealt with in a class of differing opinions. I think that by sticking with a matter of fact approach and not discounting any one theory I can keep students from being discouraged. In this part of the US there is still a lot of resistance to an evolution course and angering the students by belittling their cultural beliefs is counterproductive. I have had teachers that have done this, and I lost respect for them even though I personally agreed with them. This will be my fine line to walk. There is a site that has information regarding psychology students worries about teaching that have many similar questions raised that I might have about my teaching.

To maintain a passion for teaching is important for how I will keep teaching as long as some of the faculty in my department. This can be done by reading scientific journals, continuing to discuss issues with peers, and to keep up with other researchers work. Peer and student review is important for keeping your teaching skills honed. The real goal in my mind is to keep from getting to stale. Things need to be changed at times in science courses because there is always a different facet that is updated. As science is fluid, so must my teaching be. To keep along the same course without update is a recipe for disaster. Not only must the information change, but the way the information is presented must change. For better or worse other things must be tried to keep things interesting. The classes that I have taken in which the teacher tried a new way of teaching have been at times annoying, but they were significantly better than the courses in which the teacher was riding out the rest of his tenure before he could retire. I owe it to the students to try and learn each semester as much as they do. Linked here is a site that talks about teacher burnout and ways to prevent it.